Network virtualization allows infrastructure providers, such as data center network operators and internet service providers, to offer virtualized slices of their physical networking infrastructure to other service providers. Virtualization of the network allows multiple virtual networks to be embedded onto a single underlying physical network infrastructure. The embedding of virtual networks onto a physical network can increase the resource management requirements of the physical network components. Typical objectives of virtual network embedding include maximizing the fraction of embedded virtual networks, minimizing the bandwidth provisioning cost on the physical network, etc.
Survivable virtual network embedding attempts to maintain the embedded virtual networks in the event of failures in the underlying physical network infrastructure. Providing survivable virtual network embedding may use a reactive approach that restores embedded virtual networks in response to failures in the underlying physical network infrastructure. Proactive survivable virtual network embedding approaches may proactively provision the virtual network, or portions of the virtual network, onto redundant or backup physical infrastructure. However, such proactive approaches typically rely on over provisioning of the physical network resources, which results in increased capital expenditure.